A Savage Week in Port O’Connor
Six straight days of fishing—-that’s a real vacation, even if you’re tired and sore each night. You won’t find me wading through the buffet line on a cruise ship with a thousand tourists, or some idyllic beach reposing in a lawn chair reading a trashy novel…I seem to be happier slinging spoons where waves wash and crash against cruel jetty rocks on the Texas coast.
So that’s what Pete Churton and I did last week, covered well from a hot sun, battling fish each day in Port O’Connor. The very first fish took the starch out of me, a 45-plus inch redfish caught with a smallish Ambassador 6000 reel…The brute wouldn’t give up after it nailed my home-made bucktail jig (tossed at a surface swirl near the rocks) and it dove deep for at least 10 minutes. It set the pace for the rest of our week.
We then brought former neighbor Ladd Hockey along for a 12-hour day out there, racking up six of those oversized “bull” redfish and nine slot-sized redfish, also landing two out of three tarpon at the jetties. We used live mullet, casting them like lures at rolling tarpon.
I had a tarpon roll and gulp my mullet perhaps 20 feet away, flashing chrome-sideways in the water, a beautiful sight…for a moment I nearly panicked and opened the spin reel’s bail to feed it line, which is a huge mistake with tarpon. It slashed through 20 feet of water, ripping braid line off the spool, and my hand was in the way. That tarpon jumped after the sketchy hook-set, throwing the circle hook, and my trigger finger had its fingernail cut off, but only the part you normally trim with clippers…a half-inch of nail ripped almost off, hanging 90 degrees…it seems braid line will cut like a dull knife. At one point, a tarpon of Ladd’s jumped eight feet in the air, higher than our heads. They’re an amazing fish.
When we ran out of live mullet, thanks to swarms of predatory ladyfish, we resorted to live croaker, which we’d bought just this once because the locals had been racking up tarpon using these very baits. The free-lined croakers would dive down better than finger mullet, ladyfish would only peck at them, and then thump! A redfish would inhale each one. Also a snook, the first we’ve seen on the middle Texas coast. Anyway, we were wore out after 12 hours and headed back for happy hour, beating the sundown.
Next day, friend and tarpon guide Curtiss Cash from Victoria agreed to ride along in our boat. We could certainly use his expertise, after nine years in these waters…We checked his close-in surf and Pass Cavallo big tarpon spots, where the waters had muddied since the Louisiana storm (with north winds Gulf-wide) only a few days before. Nothing happening, so we eased back into our spot on the jetty and settled down for some warm work.
Big jacks, bull redfish, keeper redfish for the grill, more ladyfish, a bucket of Spanish mackerel, a tarpon…action grew frantic in the evening, with minnows spraying everywhere. Gulls screamed and pelicans dove at sunset. One gull sat on a number of pelicans, hoping for free scraps.
Our free-lined mullet couldn’t match the pace, so Pete and I used the old ways of yesteryear, slinging gold or white spoons, earning multiple strikes on almost every cast. We fought fish until sunset. Lost a lot of tackle, with big fish diving behind prominent submerged rocks. The entire evening remains a blur.
But not next morning. Curtiss again rode with us, and he scanned his favorite areas offshore in the 30 foot depths for big tarpon. We stopped at two platforms offshore, where big sandtrout were biting and borderline keeper snapper there in state waters, then got the phone call. Another tarpon guide, KT, was patrolling the same area we’d checked, and now the big tarpon were finally rolling where they could be seen. KT had fly guys on his boat, real diehards hoping to present a fly in front of rolling tarpon on that vast expanse of water. We weren’t that proud, easing within 300 yards of him and watching tarpon rolling around us. We quickly set out three rods with live mullet. Pete’s rod soon screeched (or was it Pete?) and he was fast into a 100-pounder that jumped so high and close it left us all bug-eyed without even reaching for a camera. A nice battle on an Ambassador 7000 reel and Pete soon had it near the boat, but the hook pulled—-it was a smaller circle hook used back at the platform. Pete’s rod also had the only egg weights, amounting to two ounces or so, keeping his bait deep, so we rigged the remaining rods accordingly.
Pete’s lucky rod screeched again and a 120-pounder jumped free on the first try, ejecting a new 14/0 circle hook. We drifted on and the afternoon grew hotter. Tarpon rolled around us many times, up to half a mile away. I used the electric motor at full throttle, moving several hundred yards where we’d last seen them, and we’d set out another spread of mullet. At one point I was amidships sitting next to Curtiss’s Shimano 4500 Baitrunner spin reel with 65-pound braid line. We’d bolted stainless steel rod holders up and down Pete’s boat, so our rods during a sideways drift were evenly spaced. Then it happened.
Several of our rod holders were bolted on the inside of the boat’s gunnel, so they wouldn’t bump a marina dock and damage them. But as it turns out, you can’t bolt one of these puppies down on the inside of the hull, strong enough to withstand a tarpon strike using heavy drag on the reel. (Fairly heavy drag is desirable when setting a circle hook into a bony tarpon’s mouth). A huge tarpon suddenly hit like a freight train, bending the rod holder down that was mounted inches behind me, down and almost flat to the horizon…Curtiss yelled “grab the rod” and I spun and slapped a glove on the rod’s foregrip in about 1.5 seconds, then a second glove. I was in the right place at the right time: Though aimed at a flat horizon, the rod was still jammed inside the holder. Perhaps the rod’s handle was warping inside the rod holder, under the strain.
I wrenched it out of the holder, and it was time to dance…I scrambled up to the bow while the first 100 yards of braid line ripped off the reel, and we began to follow with the boat. Faster, more throttle…In the near distance, KT’s fly guys glumly watched, counting the jumps. By then the reel was well into the mono backing, but as we picked up speed and I reeled like crazy, we got the fish back on the braid line. We estimated this tarpon at 150-plus pounds, but never got to measure it. We got within 30 feet, and clearly saw it cruising the surface from right to left, close to seven feet long. Suddenly the line slacked for perhaps two feet, and we surmised it had wrapped a pectoral fin and the line came loose from that. Then this great fish jumped for the fourth time with a crash, while Pete’s camera clicked away at six frames per second, and the hook sailed free.
What a fish. That evening I nursed a strong one on the front porch of Jimmy Crouch’s trailer, which was always Tarpon Central for us going back to 1988. We re-rigged all rods with heavier 200-pound Ande leader with 2-ounce weights and big, sharp circle hooks, preparing ourselves for the following day. And this time as it turns out we would have 75 big live mullet in the live well, instead of 15.
But guess what? We returned to the same spot marked with GPS the day before, and nary a tarpon rolled. Several drifts with tasty mullet, and only a pair of big, energetic blacktip sharks came calling. We then ran 15 miles south in the same depth off the beach, on the theory these fish were migrating towards Mexico. Patrolling in perfect conditions, green water with just a ripple, with nary a whitecap or flashing fish. Not even a pelican’s splash. Nada…We tried the platforms way down south, boxing a half dozen of our biggest Spanish mackerel of the trip, but never saw a tarpon. And this time the patient KT put it on us, checking shallow water, finally hitting tarpon in only 12 feet. He found a rare pod of tarpon actually following a school of jacks, and one of his guys nailed a 50-pound tarp with his flyrod. Good on them…Just where all of those big rolling tarpon went from the day before, no man knows.
We had definitely peaked for the week. A million cabbage head jellyfish, each the size of a baseball, arrived at the jetties and near Pass Cavallo, shutting down the action entirely. The Sunday morning crowd gave up in disgust, with 20 boats apparently returning to port empty-handed. But the trip was a great one and we didn’t suffer a scratch. I did lose a favorite pair of needlenose pliers on the first day to a snagged bull shark that spun around quick as a cat and snapped empty air where my hand had just been. Also lost a cheap bucket and a bait dipnet. But that ain’t bad for six days of action on the Texas Gulf.
We also had big fun watching the current swarm of hummingbirds in Port O’Connor, birds crowding around the feeders before they migrate down to the Yucatan in October. Captain Joe Surovik, who we also stayed with during our week, keeps his feeders going full-time. I’ll post some hummingbird photos in tomorrow’s Blog.
